


you'll never know, dear, how much i love you (please don't take my sunshine away)

by rosesareredvioletsareblue



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Episode: s02e15 Revelations, Hurt Spencer Reid, I really don't know what this is season two is just so good, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesareredvioletsareblue/pseuds/rosesareredvioletsareblue
Summary: Spencer opened his eyes.Which normally wouldn’t be cause for concern, except he’s pretty sure he just died in a shed and his team was forced to watch.What makes the situation worse is that there's a young woman sitting across from him who looks achingly familiar but he's to embarrassed to ask who she is.(or: Reid dies during the Hankel ordeal and has a visitor in the afterlife)
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & Roslyn Jareau, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Comments: 4
Kudos: 235





	you'll never know, dear, how much i love you (please don't take my sunshine away)

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I really wish I could tell you what this is but I was rewatching season two and I couldn't stop thinking about this concept so now we're here. Anyway, enjoy!

Spencer opened his eyes. 

Which normally wouldn’t be cause for concern, except he’s pretty sure he just died alone in a shed and his team was forced to watch. 

So, not the greatest day in the Spencer Reid book. 

Sighing, he sat up and took in his surroundings. He was sitting in an empty room. Huge, arching windows plastered the walls, filling the room with blinding white light. 

“Hello?” He called out, listening to his voice echo across the space. He waited, hoping for a response. “Is anyone there?” He tried again, ignoring the logic racing through his brain, screaming at him that  _ of course no one’s there, you idiot, you’re dead. _

Spencer decided that he really, really hated being dead. 

“You’re not totally dead, you know.” A voice said from behind him. He whirled towards it. 

“That’s good.” He replied. The steadiness of his voice surprised him. The voice- the woman now, since the voice had a source- cringed a bit. 

“Well, I mean you are. Your body is.” 

“No offense, but that’s not very comforting.” The woman gave him an annoyed look that was achingly familiar, but he couldn’t quite place where he recognized her from. 

“I know. You’re a man of science, Spencer. And this?” She gestured around them. “I can’t tell you what this is, but I don't think it's science.” Spencer stared at her as his brain worked a mile a minute to try and figure out who she was and how the  _ hell _ she knew his name. 

“So,” he said, drumming his fingers on the floor. The woman sat next to him. “Are you dead?” She laughed, and her identity smacked him in the face like a ton of bricks. 

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” She asked him. Spencer smiled. 

“Of course I know you.” He replied. “JJ told me so much about you. It’s nice to finally meet you, Roslyn.” Roslyn smirked. He should have seen it sooner. Roslyn looked just like her sister, their hair color and style being the only thing that made them look different. 

Roslyn’s sister, who just watched her best friend die and couldn’t do anything to stop it. 

Any trace of a smile melted off Spencer’s face at the thought of JJ at his funeral. Because he knew she would be there. JJ and Morgan and Garcia and Hotch and Prentiss and Gideon. The thought of his family standing over his coffin made him want to die all over again. 

“You said I wasn’t totally dead?” Spencer asked, panic clouding his mind. He kept repeating his team’s names in his head like a mantra.  _ Jennifer and Derek and Penelope and Aaron and Jason and Emily. _ Roslyn frowned, tilting her head in thought, and it made Spencer’s heart hurt because  _ it was such a JJ like tick _ he wanted to cry. 

“Scientifically, you’re dead.” She said bluntly. “Heart stopped beating, not breathing, the whole nine yards.” 

“So what is this?” He shouted, leaping to his feet. Roslyn looked startled, but he didn’t care because all he could think about was his family  _ standing over his fucking grave _ . 

“I told you.” She stood up to meet his eyes, and for the second time in like, five minutes, (five minutes, thirty-six seconds, to be exact,) Spencer felt like he was going to cry. “I don’t know.” 

“I need to go home.” He didn’t care that his voice broke, or that he fell to his knees. Roslyn sat next to him, rubbing his shoulder sympathetically. 

“I know.” She said. 

They sat in silence for a while, before Roslyn spoke up. “I think this is your soul.” Spencer looked at her, eyes gleaming silver. 

“What?” Spencer wiped the leftover silent tears off his face. Roslyn sighed, absentmindedly rubbing her wrist. 

“God, or the universe, or some other entity that you can pick from the array of religious knowledge in that big brain of yours, knew you needed a friend. Or just someone to wait with you. Not physically, but spiritually.”

Spencer blinked. “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.” 

Roslyn looked shocked. “Really?” Spencer cringed.

“No, but it made me feel a little better.” Roslyn laughed.

“I’m glad, Spence.” Spencer looked at her, startled.

“How’d you-”

“When JJ was five, she had a stuffed bear named Spencer. She called him ‘Spence’. He was her best friend until she made human friends. But even after that, I’d catch her pulling him out of the toy box and just hugging him on a bad day. I thought it was funny that she grew up and immediately got a real Spencer to be her best friend.” 

Spencer laughed. “Thanks, Roslyn.” She stared at him quizzically.

“For what?” 

“I don’t know. For making me feel better, I guess.” 

She paused, before pulling him into a tight hug. “Spencer?”

“Yeah?” 

“Your team needs you.” 

Something was happening. He could feel it. Like the forces holding him in this place were dissolving around him, and they were taking him with it. 

“Roslyn?” She let him out of the hug, but held his shoulders with force enough to bruise.

“Your family needs you.” Roslyn met his eyes. She started to blur, the brightness of the room fading into grey. He could feel pressure on his chest.  _ Compressions _ , some still working part of his brain supplied.

“What?” He asked, looking around frantically. 

“My sister needs you, Spence.” Roslyn smiled sadly. “Keep an eye on her for me. And tell her-” Roslyn swallowed. “Tell her that I’ll love her until the day after forever.” 

Spencer nodded. “I will, Roslyn. I promise.” 

\---

Spencer opened his eyes and coughed on the floor of the shed, Tobias Hankel standing over him, thrust back into the land of the living. 

_ “Keep an eye on her for me. And tell her I’ll love her until the day after forever.”  _ Spencer, in the split second after his resurrection, came up with a plan to get out of this. Because he has a promise to keep. And a family to get back to.

No matter what happened, he refused to die again. At least, not for a very, very long time.

\---

“I knew you’d come.” He whispered into Hotch’s shoulder hours later. His foot hurt like hell, and he was craving and bleeding and traumatized, but they were _ there _ .

“Spence!” JJ cried, pulling Spencer into a tight hug. 

“JJ?” He whispered into her ear. “You are not going to _ believe _ what happened.”

(He told her later in the hospital. They sobbed into each other’s arms for hours, while Roslyn’s ghost, unseen, stood smiling in the corner.)

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I don't know what this is, I just had to write it out. I hope you liked it!


End file.
